For centuries, successive generations of academics have pondered the mysteries of creativity. Where does it originate? What separates the truly creative individual from others? Why does it seem to come and go? Can it be taught?

Soon, Western University will have a scholar whose full-time job is grappling with those questions.

“We want someone who is going to be able to inspire all of us,” said Bryce Traister, chair of Western’s English department.

The new position — it was announced last year, and fundraising has started — is named in honour of Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the acclaimed Huron County short-story writer who hails from Wingham and lives in Clinton. “We’re undertaking this with the knowledge, permission and blessing of Alice Munro and her family,” Traister said proudly.

The Alice Munro Chair in Creativity is the only such position in a humanities setting connected to a Nobel winner.

“I’ve never heard of another one,” Traister said, noting he does know of creativity chairs in other disciplines — business, for example. The trend in academic circles is toward considering creativity as a legitimate subject of study on its own.

Traister said Western has a special relationship with Munro; not only did she attend the university in the 1950s, but also the only honorary doctorate she has ever accepted was from the London school.

The planning for the chair had been going on for the past few years. In the meantime, Munro had been collecting literary honours, finally culminating in her 2013 Nobel win.

The endowment will be worth $3 million — the university has put up half that amount, and donors are being asked to chip in with the other $1.5 million.

“Endowed chairs are a tough business,” Traister said.

The holder of the chair will serve a three-year renewable appointment. Although a writer would be considered for the chair, the creativity position is not the same as Western’s existing writer-in-residence program.

“It’s different because it’ll be a permanent position within the faculty ranks,” Traister said.

The eventual holder of the chair will have to be willing to teach, but they could come from any number of walks of life. “It is necessarily an open concept,” Traister said, adding what excites him is knowing, just as Munro wrote her first stories as a student at Western 60 years ago, the next Munro — the next great Canadian inventor — is somewhere on campus at this moment.

“There is a student in one of our classes right now who is going to write that story,” Traister said.

The creativity chair will also be called on to be an ambassador between the university and London’s creative community.

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.